A lawmaker who helped author Kansas' constitutional amendment banning gay marriage questioned a state official Tuesday about why his agency included sexual orientation in an anti-discrimination clause for safe houses for victims of human trafficking.

The safe houses, or "staff secure facilities," are under the purview of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and are part of the sweeping anti-trafficking statutes passed by the Legislature last year in Senate Sub for House Bill 2034.

The legislation was a major initiative for Gov. Sam Brownback, who will sign a proclamation Thursday declaring January Human Trafficking Awareness Month in Kansas.

Daric Smith, KDHE's program director for child placing and residential programs, came before the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules and Regulations to tell legislators how the department planned to implement the law.

After rattling off a series of nondiscrimination categories for admission to the secure facilities that included gender and race, Rep. Jan Pauls, D-Hutchinson, asked Smith why sexual orientation was also included.

“I wasn’t sure what your origin was on listing sexual preference," Pauls said. "Gender covers a lot of the sexual discrimination, potentially. I just wasn’t sure why the sexual preference was added.”

Smith said it was a safeguard to ensure homosexual victims get helped.

“The issue is, if you have a homosexual child who was prostituted out there, you don’t want a facility denying treatment to that child,” Smith said. “Not that we believe anybody would deny services based on that."

Pauls also said she didn’t believe any human trafficking victims would be denied access to a safe house on that basis, but she said including it in legal nondiscrimination regulations could pose problems for religious institutions providing help, whether they be Christian, Muslim and other faiths that oppose homosexual activity.

“They might refuse if part of the followup treatment is to make the person comfortable in the alternative lifestyle they may have been forced into,” Pauls said.

Pauls, a lawyer, noted that state statutes don’t include sexual orientation among attributes for which Kansans are protected from discrimination.

“Once you use the term 'discrimination' we usually follow our statutes,” Pauls said.

Smith said he would look into it.

But Sen. Tom Hawk, D-Manhattan, said during a break in the hearing he thought the department was smart to include sexual orientation because human trafficking often relates directly to sexual activity and some of the victims will be homosexuals.

"If you want to help people who are involved in human trafficking, you don't want to leave out that five percent or 10 percent," Hawk said.

When the time came for the committee to make recommendations on the proposed rules and regulations, Pauls said the language regarding "sexual preference" should be removed from the nondiscrimination provisions because it was "not following the statutes."

“Anything that’s not under our discrimination statutes should be dropped out of the definitions of what legal discrimination is,” Pauls said.

Rep. Mark Kahrs, R-Wichita, said he concurred with Pauls' recommendation and also pointed out that KDHE had left out "ancestry," which is in state nondiscrimination statutes. He recommended that it be added to replace sexual preference.

"Deleted one and added one," Kahrs said.

Hawk recommended that it be made clear somewhere that homosexual human trafficking victims should receive services.

“Maybe that’s not an appropriate place to put that, under discrimination," Hawk said. "Maybe there’s another place. But those people may really need those services so I want to make sure they’re not excluded.”

Sen. Vicki Schmidt, R-Topeka, said after the hearing that she, too, hoped the department could find some place in the regulations to ensure services for homosexual victims.

Pauls has consistently found herself at odds with gay-rights groups, but said her concerns about the KDHE regulations were purely legal.

"I just think when you use the term 'discrimination' you need to follow our statutes," Pauls said.

Pauls said protections based on sexual orientation could be included elsewhere.

"There can be other regulations, but it can't be tied to discrimination," she said.